


A Sting and a Semblance

by Aspire_to_Inspire



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-06-22 09:17:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19664407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aspire_to_Inspire/pseuds/Aspire_to_Inspire
Summary: Qrow's POV in the aftermath of V04E07 "Punished."





	A Sting and a Semblance

_He's got weapons, but he's using his tail._

The cement wall crumbled under the force of his speed.

_So he doesn't want her dead, just manageable._

The tail pinged hard against his blade; he measured the vibrations up and down his back.

_But judging by sheer size, that thing does way worse than sting._

He listened to the organic crackle of the jointed appendage retreating as he fed this information to his body, programming it for extra speed and care.

_Don't let it touch you._

He registered the rest of the kids struggling to their feet in his periphery, fear still fresh on all of them. He saw the trust in Ruby's eyes along with the pained slump of her shoulders.

_Don't let it touch them._

A familiars stab of anxiety ran through him as he rounded on the faunus—not from the opponent in front, but the proximity of those at his back. It wasn't just the stinger he couldn't let touch them.

_Be quick, be untouchable, but above all..._

As Qrow drew on his aura he could sense calamity rising around him, eager to splinter the first frailty it encountered.

 _...be far,_ _**far** _ _away._

Combat was much faster than most thought it was. If Qrow had been asked, he could have described very little of what happened during an exchange of blows, especially with an enemy this dangerous. Instead there was only a razor-sharp focus in body and mind that brought him instant composure, every cell of his body wired for exertion.

The only thing that could shatter his calm was the battered figures that suddenly leaped into his line of sight. They both took hits and went down before he got between them and the enemy again.

“Don't come closer!” he snarled. He couldn't divide his focus to keep them safe from the faunus at close range—he couldn't even be certain they were safe from _him._

_Farther._

He pressed his opponent, demanding his full attention as he directed their combined destructive force away from the children, his semblance snapping roof-beams and collapsing walls around them. His aura drained steadily, but when it flickered so did Tyrian's, and if Qrow's years of bloody experience had taught him anything it was by far how to outlast the enemy. This would end no differently.

When the beam fell toward Ruby—stubborn Ruby who couldn't resist defending someone she loved any more than the sun could resist rising—it was not with a sense of panic but habit that he rushed to protect her; he'd spent decades pushing safety to the back of his mind to compensate for his semblance when skill alone would not. He saved her on autopilot, a fond smile on his lips just before the consequences struck.

The venom took quickly to his pounding bloodstream, its painful invasion momentarily jolting Qrow's mind off balance into a jumble of _protect—lethal—all your fault—_ _ **fix it**_ _._

He kept his feet, held his stance, weapon at the ready. He could still fight, he could still finish this if he had to, he _could..._ but then the threat retreated and took his strength with it, sending him to the ground.

He ignored their questions as he dragged his breath to steadiness, but he could tell they were confused and afraid. Good. That meant they weren't angry with him yet.

“Uncle Qrow, what's going on?”

_Well, all good things in time._

He got to his feet. He took a pull from his flask. He walked his niece and her entourage out of Oniyuri into the woods where he welcomed her offer to bandage his wound while the others felled trees for a fire and a place to sit.

Then he told the truth.

Sure, the Arc kid was mad, Ruby was overwhelmed, and the other two he didn't know enough to guess how they might be taking everything, but Qrow was certain they would all prove resilient. Still, spelling out the nature of his semblance made shame burn hot alongside the poison. The palpable distain in Jaune's remark he could take because it was only fair, but the thought of Ruby's disappointment kept him from looking directly at her. He shambled away into the dark, eager to renew the distance that remained one of the few kindnesses he could offer. They would need time to process and talk candidly without the discomfort of his presence, and he needed the opportunity to readjust to the pain quickly winding tighter.

He went just far enough to still be in earshot of anything more intense than a mere argument and paused at the foot of a tree. He stared up into the branches, wishing he could roost in them, in the dark, high places that made him less exposed, but changing form while wounded was always risky business, and the amount of poison in his blood was probably more than enough to kill his smaller form in minutes. He braced his hands against the trunk and bowed his head, trying push the flood of pain back—to where, he didn’t know; the only part of him that didn’t ache and burn was, ironically, the wound itself, which had gone numb and tingly. He leaned more of his weight into the tree to ground himself, pressed his head against the cracked bark to clear it.

_Alright...what now?_

His first instinct was to leave, but chances were he wouldn’t survive alone. Which wouldn’t have been all that bad if Beacon hadn’t just fallen and Ozpin been killed and Ironwood and Atlas been locked down and Leo gone quiet and the kids gotten involved and—

His heartbeat stuttered on its rapid upward climb, and Qrow’s careful breathing was failing to reign it in.

_l'm all that's left. The embodiment of a worst-case scenario, and **I'm** all that's left?_

The cane pressed against the small of his back beneath Harbinger seemed to say yes.

_Damn it all._

Okay, so quiet death wasn't on the agenda, which left the far more difficult question of how he was supposed to say alive without bringing any harm to the kids. Even splitting up the group to put just some of them in the clear was far too risky. His back went rigid as bark began to crumbled under his clenching fingers, frustration bone-deep and boiling.

_You're nothing but an injured liability now, attracting danger to the kids you're supposed to **protect**._

_Disgusting._

What happened next would be up to the kids once they found him out, which, if Qrow had his way, wouldn’t be until morning. The four of them needed at least one last night of decent rest before he lent any more urgency to their situation. Thankfully, they were all too close to sleep by the time he returned to take note of him. Jaune was snuggled down deep in his sleeping bag, looking at something on his scroll, and Ruby’s head popped up when she heard him coming, but Qrow pretended not to notice either of them as he found another tree to settle against, doing his best to communicate that he was going to keep watch and didn’t need anything—no place to sleep, no help with his wound, no word or look to suggest that they considered him anything more than a bearer of bad news and worse luck.

He would require plenty from them soon enough.  
______________________________________________________________________

  
It wasn't hard to stay awake, though the state of consciousness he found himself in would hardly have been considered alert. His heart rate had continued to flutter at a punishing speed, and his breathing had been the next thing to escape his control, growing more and more ragged. Still as possible against the tree trunk, eyes never more than half-open, he spent the night doing his best to let the pain wash through him without gaining too firm a hold.

His lungs stuttered and coughed a foul taste into the back of his throat. When he tried to swallow it back they only seized harder, flooding his mouth and slipping past his lips and—gods, she was right there, watching him pull away a hand stained with poison. Ruby knew, soon they all knew, soon there were questions flying about again. Ruby was on one knee beside him and the darker boy, Ren, was peeling back his bandages to check the damage, sending funny ripples of discomfort that grew hotter as they left the numbed area. The boy exchanged a strained glance with Ruby before confirming that he was dying with more words and tact than Qrow probably would have bothered with.

Jaune spun on his heel and took a few steps away, only to start pacing back and forth with an expression of—frustration, yes, but also far more genuine concern than Qrow had expected from him. “What do we do?”

“Well, we can’t leave him,” the pink one said. "He saved our lives!”

"I doubt anyone's suggesting that, Nora," Ren said calmly.

Qrow snorted to himself. _If I’d thought you would I'd’ve cleared out last night and made it easy for you._

Ruby gave him a dismayed frown, as though reading his attitude. He caught the flash of regret in the expression that told him she was still a little broken up about the part she'd played in his injury, but Ruby had clearly picked up on the concept of moving past mistakes far better than he had— _he_ was still resisting the temptation to turn into a bird and nestle down somewhere to die.

One big apology to a world full of people better off without him.

But no, instead, with a horrendous amount of effort, he heaved himself to his feet and comforted himself with the idea that they could still chuck him in a ditch somewhere when-- _if_ the need arose.

__________________________________________________________________________

He didn't make it far, but it was long enough that collapsing only brought him a modicum of embarrassment. The sweethearts were in front, Jaune in back, and Ruby was beside him, carrying his scythe as well as her own. One arm wrapped around her shoulders, even short as they were, helped steady him as his head swam and his struggle to breathe gave away more of his distress than he ever would have admitted to voluntarily.

Then just like that his legs folded.

The impact rattled every one of his raw nerves, and by the time his vision came back from white to register the blurry face of his niece, he was fully sprawled on the ground. She was concerned, he could make out over the ringing in his ears, and pestering him to get up.

“ _Gimme a break, Sum',_ ” he heard himself say without actually speaking. “ _I'm too sick for training today._ ” He closed his eyes, wondered if she thought he was faking...and someone shook him into opening them again.

“Uncle Qrow!” Ruby exclaimed, and her white face motivated him to try speaking for real this time.

“S'okay,” he said thickly. “Just really tired alluva sudden.” A radical oversimplification: his heart was a hummingbird behind his ribs, and his chest ached for air as though it were being crushed. Cold sweat was sliding down his skin and his muscles were screaming, but not as loudly as when he moved. Maybe if he stayed here and never moved again...

The thought was so tempting he almost swatted away the hands that helped him up and sent fresh fire burning through him. A yelp jumped out and sent him into a coughing fit, and when it ended he was only upright by loose definition, braced on either side by Jaune and Ren. He tried and failed to take his weight, and Ruby only continued to look him up and down, brows drawn together in worry.

“We need to stop,” she said softly, and Qrow could see that Jaune was speaking to her, but instead he heard his own voice again, without his mouth forming the words:

“ _I'm_ _ **fine,**_ _Tai, I can keep going. You're just sick of me leaning on you._ ”

Silver eyes stared into his, kind and frightened. He blinked and they were Ruby's eyes. Blinked again, and they were Summer's.

“I'm alright,” he rasped, but aloud to his niece or in his mind to a ghost, he couldn't quite tell. “Promise.”

It was Ruby's eyes that smiled, and her voice that said, “It's okay, we've got you.”

He thought maybe Summer said something, too, but all he could make out was a snatch of her laughter.

It took them a few minutes to find a suitable place to stop, his senses fading in and out until he was guided to the ground and received by something soft and warm. He immediately melted into the comfort that then doubled to envelope him from head to foot. He'd been spending his nights as a bird for over a month, so long his real body had forgotten lying in something so forgiving. He immediately let go of consciousness, the pain receding farther and farther away.

He hoped the kids remembered to keep their distance from him while they had the opportunity.

Three times something woke him. The first was Ruby, who wanted him to drink something (she'd also suggested food, but Qrow had already retreated back to the _soft-and-warm_ ). The second time it was Raven and Tai, arguing over nothing again. Raven was using her down-for-murder voice only for Tai to mimic it back at her so poorly she could only growl in response.

“ _You know he likes you; you're just too dumb to realize you like him back.”_

Qrow smirked at her haughty glare before his eyelids got heavy again.

He must have spent hours in the dark before he was woken a third time to gentle laughter. The light stung his eyes, but he could make out two blurry figures. One was Summer, he was certain, and he thought the other was Raven, but no—it was Yang. Yang grown up and strong as Summer never got to see her.

They wrapped their arms around each other, still laughing softly, as though aware how impossible their meeting was, before Summer noticed him watching.

“Qrow...” Hearing her say his name with such gentleness wrenched his heart so violently it might have torn in half.

“Look, Uncle Qrow,” Yang said cheerfully. “Mom's come home.” She turned to him, revealing her right arm, a bloody stump pouring crimson over Summer's white cloak. Neither of them seemed to mind that the severed limb was spurting streaks of red over Summer's face while Yang's smile turned steadily white.

He couldn't breathe.

“It's okay,” they said in unsettling harmony. “It's okay, it's okay,” they repeated over and over, mocking him because it _wasn't_ okay, not that Yang had lost her arm and her mother and so much _blood;_ not that Summer died and she was _dead_ and she never saw her daughters grow up, and he was sorry, _sorry..._!

His chest was on fire and his head was splitting and hands were touching him, voices calling him up out of the dark, but he ignored them, letting pain press him down, down, back into the nothing. He hoped he never dreamed again.

Of course, he wasn't that lucky.

______________________________________________________________

The next time he felt real again he noticed a swaying sensation that told him he was being carried. He'd hardly had time to find that annoying before the now-familiar pain flooded in. He braced against it, swallowing back nausea as chills needled their way up and down his skin, but it kept shredding through him mercilessly until his mind was awash with nothing but pin-prick static.

He clenched his teeth and rode it out, white-knuckling the memory of Ruby's voice and Yang's sunshine hair and Ozpin's subdued smile and the smell of fresh cookies as Tai and Summer welcomed him home, home, _home_...

Finally, _finally,_ it began to ease back, inch by inch, leaving him limp and trembling.

He pried his eyes open, refusing to fall back into the mire without fighting for at least a moment of clarity. He found himself looking up at a clouded sky before Ruby's face blotted it out, tears caught in her eyelashes. She let out a shaky breath.

“I thought...you couldn't breathe and...” Her jaw worked. “Please hold on,” she whispered.

Qrow did his best to nod.

“...trying...” He struggled to turn his head and took in Jaune, looking scared but staunch as always, and, behind him, a scene of ruin worse that Oniyuri.

“…other…two?”

Jaune’s eyes grew bright with anxiety. “They went up the mountain while we went around. They might find help, or at least figure out exactly where we are.” Qrow would have groaned if he'd had the energy. Split up? Lost? In the middle a decimated town that screamed danger?

 _Sounds about right with_ _**you** _ _around._

The thought was his own, but it was backed by a lifetime of voices echoing the sentiment, from his tribe to his sister to even Tai when he was cross enough. Jaune’s face was far from accusatory, but now he was one of those echoes, too: _“You’re just a big bundle of help, aren’t you?”_

 _Stop it._ _Not the time._

“Ruby, help me…help me up…please?” She looked aghast.

“No, no, you need to stay still.”

“ _I only asked to sit up, Raven, not tap dance.”_

“I feel better…up,” he mumbled. What he was unwilling to say was that his last fit had drained him so deeply he was certain that if he let himself drift away he’d never come back. They obligingly lay him back against a tree in what used to be the town square and went off searching for something they could use to help him. He knew there was no point: anything left here would have been picked clean—maybe even by his own tribe if they had been in the area. Wouldn’t that be sad, if they finally managed to cause the end of him and didn't have the pleasure of knowing it. Unless Raven was still lurking about, watching to see if Qrow would be taking her secret about the Spring Maiden to the grave.

He listened to Ruby and Jaune’s mournful exchange, less to understand it and more for something to hold onto. The mention of the girl, Pyrrha, had regret crawling all over him like hot tar, and then...gods, there was a shriek out of hell that he vainly hoped was only another nightmare safely confined to his head. His eyes briefly fluttered open, and he could only just make out the blurred form of Jaune, hand on his sword hilt as he pivoted back and forth, searching for the danger. Qrow would have given anything to be standing with him, but keeping his eyes open was already too strenuous a task. _“Please, please,”_ he prayed into the dark, to either god bothering to listen, but he couldn’t even force his thoughts to coherency. The scream was back, and the fear in the air was so thick he could taste it, sour and biting on his tongue. His chest tightened until it might rip apart.

If any of them died because of him, he would never survive it.

There was gunfire, and the ground trembled before Jaune was suddenly grabbing his arm and hauling him up, the sudden movement almost enough to make him pass out.

 _Hold on for Ruby,_ he insisted, trying to bear some of his weight on his dragging feet. _She said…to hold on..._

The noise receded and he opened his eyes and latched onto the first thing he saw, catching Jaune’s hand in a stubborn grip. The boy’s face refused to come into focus, but Qrow managed to find his eyes and hold them. _I can't…it’s my…protect them, protect her, protect..._

He was gone before he could finish the thought, not a word of it making it past his lips.

___________________________________________________________________________

“It’s quiet…Good job, kiddo…"

Someone had their arms under him, lifting him up.

“What if we don’t make it in time?”

He was in the air, he could sense it, but how, without his wings?

“We made it, Uncle Qrow."

He curled his fingers into her slighter ones and let her warmth carry him away.

________________________________________________________________________

Somebody must have put some numbing drug in his system while he was out, because he woke up without the urge to tear his skin off. Either that, or all the white was the afterlife people talked about and not just the crisp sheets and clean walls and bright lights of a...

_...Oh...oh no..._

Qrow clumsily jerked his head to the side to see an IV drip inserted into his arm.

“Easy,” a male voice told him. It turned out to be a slight, dark-skinned young man hovering above him. “You're going to be fine, but we've just started getting the anti-venom into you. Best to stay still.”

“No.” Qrow's found his voice muffled by a breathing mask over his face. “Where are we?” he demanded. The medic placed a hand on his arm.

“It's alright, this is Mystral. You and the children you were with are perfectly—Hey!” he broke off in protest as Qrow lurched upward, propping himself on one elbow and yanking the off the mask. The doctor gripped his shoulder to push him back down, but backed off fast when Qrow growled at him.

“I gotta get...out of here _,_ ” he insisted breathlessly.

“Why?” the medic asked. “The children are fine, but I certainly wouldn't use the term to describe _you_. You're severely dehydrated, your blood oxidization--”

“I'm...it's dangerous,” Qrow insisted, already missing the oxygen despite himself. “How, how long will the antidote...take?”

“Another forty minutes, but you'll need to stay under observa--”

“That's _too long,_ ” he snarled, renewing his efforts to get up. “I can't be in hospitals, _never,_ it's not _safe._ ” He got his feet to the floor, but a swell of vertigo stunted his progress.

“Please, calm down,” the medic said gently. “This is just the infirmary of a defensive outpost, not a hospital. There's only two other wounded here, and neither of them are anywhere near life-threatening condition.”

“Not yet,” Qrow muttered, but some of the fight left him. “Please, just...finish with the medication and let me leave?”

“If you aren't supervised you can't have the IV or any painkillers--” Qrow waved a hand at him.

“Fine, that's...that's fine.” His panic subsiding, Qrow let himself sink back down to the mattress, pliant as the medic put the mask back in place and checked to make sure he hadn't torn out the needle in his arm.

“Alright, if that's your choice,” the medic said, turning away to adjust the IV. “The medication alone will only take about another fifteen minutes, then I'll make sure someone takes you to where your niece and her friends are staying.” He gave Qrow a sympathetic look over his shoulder. “That is, unless you change your mind; it's going to start hurting like a bitch soon as the drugs wear off.”

“Doesn't matter,” Qrow sighed. “Not worth the risk.”

Too much had been risked already. No more.

No more loss over a dusty old crow.

________________________________________________________________________

“ _Should I leave?”_

He thought up several ways to ask—a dozen combinations of tone and eye contact and body language—trying to settle on one that would calm the dark storm clouds forever roiling in the back of his mind.

 _Get away from them, you **sickness**_.

 _I can’t abandon them now_.

_They wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for you._

_Their school was destroyed, their friends were murdered, they had the right to know..._

_But **you** had no right to involve them._

His head thrummed from the dissonance, his semblance demanding he walk away, but his nature refusing to desert these kids.

That is, unless they wanted him to go. Hence, the attempt to perfectly word the question to get Ruby and her friends to banish him to some far corner of Remnant as he'd often been before. But he held his tongue and kept that futile hope to himself. This was a choice that could never be made correctly, and that wasn't a burden he was willing to share. So he would stay until they hated him for it, then he would leave even if they hated him for that, too. It would be the only reasonable response to a living curse like him.

Gods, he needed a drink.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is my favorite! Thank you!


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